Abstract

Arendt deals with politics in quite an unconventional and challenging way. Her works center on an essential problem: public freedom. Public freedom, in its very essence, springs from political action. For Arendt, not only the unprecedented, unanticipated, and perplexing phenomenon of the extreme criminality of the twentieth century, but also the perplexing fact of the mere submission to it by a majority of people forces us to rethink the meaning of politics and its locus, which make political action possible and allow public freedom to appear. For Arendt, the phenomenon of totalitarianism brought new issues forth, such as statelessness, rightlessness, homelessness, and worldlessness. These phenomena, Arendt holds, run parallel to the collapse of the essential articulations of the human condition, which can be distinguished in sheer thoughtlessness, speechlessness, and lack of judgment. It is due to these unprecedented and unanticipated issues, which cannot be addressed by traditional political categories, Arendt invites us to grapple with the meaning of politics anew. As to Arendt, there is a question which is more radical, more aggressive, and more desperate than the question of what politics is and that question is: does politics still have a meaning at all? In this paper, I will focus on Arendt’s genuine and insightful analysis of the question of politics in its indissoluable relation to the experience of totalitarianism. Through such an analysis, I do not aim at a mere presentation of Arendt’s political theory but pointing out the comprehensive horizon and validity of Arendt’s political theory in grasping of our current political problems.